Excellent article, davelj. Thanks for posting it. Agree with pretty much everything he said, and really liked this:

We should particularly not
allow ourselves to be intimidated by the fi nancial mafi a
into believing that all of the failing fi nancial companies
– or very nearly all – had to be defended at all costs. To
take the equivalent dough that was spent on propping
up, say, Goldman or related entities like AIG (that were
necessary to Goldman’s well being), as well as the many
other incompetent banks and spending it instead on really
useful, high return infrastructure and energy conservation
and oil and coal replacement projects would seem like a
real bargain for society. Yes, we would certainly have had
a very painful temporary economic hit from fi nancial and
other bankruptcies if we had decided to let them go, but
given the proven resilience of economies, it would still
have seemed a better long-term bet. But, as I said, this
is all just speculative theory and I don’t have to deal with
Congress.
——————

I think we missed our chance to do some exceptionally good things with all the money that was wasted on the financial industry.